FMP Week 2 (Creative Making)

Tuesday-

As I was away on the first day I joined a group who had already been doing stuff, they were looking at fear and blindness. I suggested that together fear and blindness could be similar to claustrophobia. We discussed various ideas for environments that might make you feel this way. We then decided as it was quite hard to just pluck an idea out of thin air we would see what materials we had to work with. When we looked at all the materials and objects we had it became a lot easier to put together an idea around the theme. Perhaps if I’m stuck for ideas in future I could carry out a similar exercise where I challenge myself to make something out of a set of materials or using a particular location or theme- often putting limits and constraints in place can spark creativity.

Friday- Crits

When looking back on this week I have now learned a few things about installations and, with my project hopefully ending up in a physical gallery space, gave me some good ideas to start looking in to. We noticed various things such as the fact that the mask worked very well as people walking past were curious to look through and how that the experience could be much better if we affected multiple senses (using music etc).

This was not a final piece by far but a good experiment to lead to greater things.

The way that we arranged the rope with the wings suspended in between gave me an idea of a fairy with shattered wings, once beautiful but now mistreated and broken. This translated into a new shoot idea involving gold paint symbolising blood where wings used to be- bringing up the exploitation/torture again.

Chris suggested to look in to stereoscopic photography- could be a way to immerse viewers in my world more; I shall need to investigate ways of practically achieving that.

Weekend-

I planned a shoot today to respond to the initial ideas that I got from the creative making week. When I woke up in the morning it was the usual case of worrying whether my ideas would work or were good enough, luckily when Ailsa arrived things went smoothly. I am finding that no matter if I have a fantastic idea beforehand or not the pressure of having someone round to do the shoot usually kicks my mind in to creative mode, the best thing to do before a shoot is probably get a good night’s sleep. I remember watching an interview with Gregory Crewdson where he said that there wasn’t a morning where he woke up before a shoot and didn’t feel sick to his stomach about whether things would go to plan.

Today’s shoot was interesting as I was working with more bare body and human form than I usually do- it forced me to think about posing and posture in regards to the spine and shoulder blades as they would be important to get right in the image. I had just watched a tutorial series on posing essentials with Lindsay Adler on creative live; she brought up many useful points on foreshortening, negative space, camera angles etc. I tried to put some of these tips in to practise and I reckon it worked well as I had to tweak what I initially though would be a good pose on paper as it initially looked like Ailsa was an amputee as you could only see her back but not her limbs.

After we had got the shot that I had planned for we decided to experiment with some other shots, especially of Ailsa’s legs. We did a shot where she exposed the majority of her legs which when paired with the delicate folds of the wedding dress showed a sense of innocence and also vulnerability which I definitely want to show in this project.

Before/After

Crop experiments

Edited Plan- 

My first plan was unrealistic and also disrupted by the Creative Making week so I have decided to come up with a new plan


Week 3
- Research and experiments
Week 4
- More research and experiments, get ready for final images
Week 5
- Finalise exact images to shoot and shoot them. Start editing
Week 6
- Finish off editing and print final images. Final research for gallery space
Week 7
- Set up gallery space and finish!

Holiday

I spent a lot of time over the holiday playing the classic Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the N64. This was a game that really changed the face of gaming and inspired many amazing titles that have come since it was released. It is still today regarded by many as the best game of all time.

It is set in an ancient and forgotten past in which you play as Link, a small boy, on which the fate of the kingdom rests on. After you spend a while playing the game it becomes so easy to lose yourself in the loneliness and emotion in the story. The game starts out as quite lighthearted and adventure driven but after a turning point in the story it quickly turns into a very dark, haunting experience.
'Strengthened by a rich, surprising realism in-spite of its cartoon definitions, its dark half, a sinister overtone of dread and pathos, paints Hyrule under a canopy of rainy graveyards, masked cadavers, and the damnation of the Shadow Temple; notable for its leaden guillotines and the corpse figurehead embellishing its River Styx ferry.'- Eurogamer
The amazing thing is this was all done with very limited graphical capabilities as it was one of Nintendo's first forays into 3D games.

The game world is very diverse, as Eurogamer states 'Hyrule is a snow globe of pockets requiring your attendance at their far-flung reaches, a broad ecosystem encompassing woodland elfin Kokiri, rock eating mountain Gorons, and capitalistic humans bartering every trinket they can lay their hands on. It's a world with an exclusive fantasy certificate, combining Celtic, Tibetan, Medieval, Egyptian, and Greek mythology for its armoury, temples and monstrous dungeon keepers'

Perhaps I could incorporate different races and elements in my project to flesh out the world I want to create?

Experimenting with magic triangle inspired by the triforce from Legend of Zelda. The triforce is representative of the power of the gods in the games, it is plastered all over the royal castle, on armour and also imprinted on the princess's skin- that's where this idea came from. I wanted to make it emit light as though something has activated it, perhaps it is some sort of distress beacon?

I had a trip to the aquarium and natural history museum to get some stock images of fish, animal, rocks and other stuff that I can use in composites if I need to. I can imagine incorporating some of the fish tank interiors into magical environments.

I also carried out various outings to Ashtead park to find some nice, natural locations to shoot my photos.

I did shoots with Mae and Ailsa experimenting with more adventurous makeup and beauty editing to continue on from my success with the 'Flower Girl' image.

I used the triangle concept in my shoot with Mae, I wanted to show someone who had been using the magic powers for evil and it was slowly consuming them.
This shoot was quite hard to pose properly as the makeup we had done was not exactly made to look flattering so I had to do a lot of tweaking in Photoshop. I think if I did the shoot again I would ask Mae to not make her lips/cheeks so loose as I had to do some clever liquifying to make the skin look a little tighter.

'Tainted Heart' Before and After

 I did a shoot with Ailsa inspired by the fairy fountains in the Legend of Zelda games. The makeup was particularly inspired by the Zora race. This time I didn't use the triangle but decided instead to use gold makeup (originally green as I couldn't make my mind up before the shoot) I found that the glitter we put on looks like tears- perhaps I could use this in my concept?

'Fairy Tears' Before and after

This led on to ideas about healing tears- perhaps the fairies are getting exploited? Are they being farmed for their healing tears?

This could challenge our ideas of what is human and what is not, should we treat these creatures like we treat other animals?

FMP Week 1

Week 1

Day 1-

 Initial thoughts and research about the theme, looking at the outfits and aesthetics of videogames I enjoy.

Day 2

Today I visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Britain.

The way that all the portraits were put together in pieced together in my mind the ‘world’ at the time; you could see people of different classes and nationalities, people’s job roles etc- I could almost imagine the whole collection translated to a fantasy world. I should explore this when deciding what images to include in my series and what

Tate Britain had a couple images that were very much my style- very detailed outfits with props and natural scenery. A couple of the images were almost uncannily similar to some photographers I admire now, it’s strange to think how old these paintings actually are. I should keep looking at paintings and other media as they may bring a broader range of ideas to my project as opposed to if I only looked at photography.

               

Shoot with Evie-

I did my first shoot with a makeup artist and also my first beauty-style edit which went pretty well although I noticed that I might have slightly overdone the reduction of shadows underneath the eyes in the edit. I reckon my first few beauty edits won’t be the best but I’ll keep practicing so that I’m ready for my final images.

               

Day 3- Crits

The crits today were very helpful, people suggested various references that I could look at. We also talked about using common words in our universe to mean something completely different in another, for example a fireman might be the person to create fires instead of put them out. This concept could be interesting as the viewer will see the word and think they know what it means, I can then turn it on its head and hopefully make people think.

The most important thing I took from the crit was the fact that I needed to concentrate on creating a really solid ‘event’ or ‘turning point’ that my project and this parallel world would pivot on, because without a strong story and meaning it will be hard to have successful visuals. I may have to alter my plans for the FMP as I don’t think I’ll be able to start shooting final images until I’m sure of my concept and story.

LBM Project 7- Promotion Week 3

Day 1/2

Finalising my plans

Shoot-

This shoot was probably the most magical shoot I have done so far- the set up was very elaborate with a lovely dress and lots of props so standing there in real life was just like living my dreams, it was so cool! Ailsa was very cooperative again and we had a lot of fun- especially with the smoke! I knew it was going to work as I had tested it the day before with some personal work, which also was very fun.

Final Crit-

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to concentrate very much on the promotion side during the three weeks as I mainly devoted my time to just producing the image, I feel like I wasn’t perhaps utilizing the time in the right way. I think I could have managed to produce a final outcome on the second week, leaving the third week free to think about promotion. Instead I let it get to the point where I only had just enough time to shoot and edit the photo for the crit.

I took the feedback from the crit into consideration and I replaced the background (originally my garden fence) with a shot I took of a clearing in the forest surrounded by trees, this helped a lot and made the overall shot more magical and mysterious. I also added hands pulling on each of the ropes; this gave a much better sense of opposition and made it look like the fairy was being surrounded.

Final image: http://flic.kr/p/kn1mBP

LBM Project 7- Promotion Week 2

Day 1-

We had a tutorial session this morning going back to thinking about what photography is. We recapped the elements of the camera, how to control it and what effects we achieve.

Day 2-

More research

Self Directed-

Deciding on which dress to buy- I went to TK maxx and found nothing that would suit a fairy look..

All was not lost though as my mum was kind enough to let me borrow her wedding dress, and it’s a perfect fit for a fairy!

I made my wire wings inspired by cicada wings- I used brown paper to give a moth like look, it will also burn well.

I tested out the dress with a photo for my 365 project of it floating like a ghost, lit from inside. Balancing on a sinking ladder in complete darkness was very interesting!

Day 3-

Today’s crit was helpful; we discussed how the image would be perceived when on social media. I must make sure my final image is relevant in today’s generation and it must be easily shareable, this is why I have decided to produce 1 main image instead of 8 as not many people would share 8 images. I also feel that the impact is better when everything is contained in 1 image.

LBM Project 7- Promotion Week 1

Day 1-

We started off the week discussing different ways that artists promote their work. Some decide to go for a more guerrilla approach and others use conventional ways of advertising. Both methods are beneficial but guerrilla is more of a one-time publicity stunt whereas conventional advertising is more long-term, sustainable method.

I came up with initial ideas surrounding the charity ‘Open Doors’ and their ‘Blackout’ campaign, it aims to raise awareness and provide support for persecuted Christians in other countries. This year they are selling Blackout branded tape and encouraging people to take pictures of themselves taped up and upload it to their Facebook page with the message ‘Make a big noise by keeping quiet’. I thought I could possibly do some kind of guerrilla promotion relating to this- possibly taping up people from my church.

When we fed back our ideas in the afternoon I realised that it was becoming less about the photography and more about the thing we were doing, which was probably not what I wanted, so I changed my train of thought back to creating a fine art piece in my style but with these themes.

Day 2-

In order to get my work out there and form new connections I started to interact with people on Twitter. I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and interactive some of my favourite photographers were. It was really cool to be able to chat to the people I look up to!

I did some more research into the theme of persecution and got a few more ideas.

Day 3-

Today I had my FMP tutorial, I hadn’t really thought about it much but I came with some initial ideas. I recently read ‘Never let me go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro, it is set in a version of relatively modern Britain where history is slightly altered by a new scientific discovery. The events that lead on after this create a new, darkly skewed version of Britain where some things are slightly off. The story challenges the readers as to whether these bad things would have actually happened had history been slightly different.

I want to create something similar where history is slightly altered, sending the timeline off on a new tangent. It would face the issues we have in this world through the realm of fantasy/sci-fi.

LBM Project 6- 'Freedom and Liberty' Week 2

Day 1-

I found a really cool artist today called Katerina Plotnikova, she did some really magical images involving people levitating next to trees high in the sky. She inspired my first solid idea, I had a vision of creating some sort of village amongst the trees and that there would be someone leaping off the side to see what the ground below was like. Everyone in the village would be outraged that they dare go down to the forbidden ground below.

Day 2-

Today I refined my idea, instead of creating a village there would be people tied to a tree and one person would be cutting the rope and breaking free. Same concept but simplified a little.

I went round to my Grandad’s house and borrowed some old sheep shears to act as the implement the character would use to cut the rope- I felt I needed something like this as standard scissors would be much too small to draw attention in the photograph.

Shoot-

The shoot this week was quite last minute as one of my models had to cancel last minute leaving me with two shoots on Thursday- Ailsa in the early afternoon and Emily in the evening. I decided to start compositing the photos involving me and the background on Wednesday and Thursday morning so that I at least had some of the edit done. The shoots didn’t leave me much time in the day so I reluctantly had to pull another all-nighter. I just managed to finish it for the morning.

Day 3-

The image was well received and kept the attention of the people in my crit for a while, which means it was a success! One thing that Clive picked up on was the fact that you could clearly see where the inspiration came from, he challenged me to try and create images in future where you wouldn’t be able to trace the image back to the inspiration. Other than that he said to keep going the same way and challenging myself as I have been doing to get better.

After the crit I corrected a couple parts in the image that I had noticed on the print.

Final image: http://flic.kr/p/jEHeWD